Cars in Books, July 1979

I have long maintained that Ford, perhaps more than any other manufacturer, has supplied primarily transport for the masses, along the years. This is nicely underlined in “The Farming Ladder” by G. Henderson (Faber & Faber, 1944). The author refers to buying “a very old second-hand Ford lorry for a ten-pound note, and this rattled the seventy-odd miles to London (from Worcester) every week, and continued to do so for nearly two years without ever letting us down.” As this was around 1926, if I have read the book correctly, this was clearly a Model-T and as it is described as “very old” even then, it could have been a brass-radiator model. It left the farm before 5 a.m. on market days and was back by midday, occasionally bringing a small return load to Oxford and district.

Incidentally, the farm was in the Cotswolds and in those day the ducks were put off laying by “a single plane hedge-hopping, which was a favourite occupation of the RAF in those days”. – W. B.